Survey Effective factors of people's health literacy Kermanshah city

Abstract

Background and objective: Health literacy is defined as 'one's capacity to understand and interpret the basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions'. In addition, those with insufficient health literacy are less likely to understand the written and oral information presented by health specialists. Hence, insufficient health literacy is considered a global threat nowadays, the present study aimed to investigate the health literacy status among the visitors to the specialized clinics based in Kermanshah, Iran, in 2016. Methods: The current study was a descriptive cross-sectional study. To collect the required data, the valid and reliable test of functional health literacy in adults (TOFHFLA) was employed. After data collection, the data were entered into the SPSS Statistics 16 Software. In addition, for data analysis, the descriptive statistics and the statistical tests of analysis of variance (ANOVA), Independent t-test and regression analysis were used. Results: The mean score of health literacy among the subjects under study was 51.93 ±6.31. Further, the results revealed that the relationship between health literacy and each of the variables of education (P<0.05), Residence area (P<0.05), Household dimension (P<0.05) were significant and age (p=1.02), marital status (p=6.31), gender (p=0.5) and occupation (p=6.31) were not significant. The results revealed that the relationship between health literacy and each of the variables of age (p=1.02), marital status (p=6.31), gender (p=0.5) and occupation (p=6.31) were not significant. Conclusion: This study showed that average health literacy in the population is estimated to be average. Recommended with changes at the macro level of society in terms of education and research increased health literacy. Paper Type: Research Article.